David Eddings - Magician's Gambit

They crept on up the passageway, being careful where they put their feet. Garion was not certain at what point the gallery began to show evidence of human construction. Finally they passed a partially open iron door. “Is there anybody in there?” he whispered to Silk.

The little man sidled up to the opening, his dagger held low and ready. He glanced in, his head making a quick, darting movement. “Just some bones,” he reported somberly.

Belgarath signalled for a halt. “These lower galleries have probably been abandoned,” he told them in a very quiet voice. “After the causeway was finished, the Murgos didn’t need all those thousands of slaves. We’ll go on up, but be quiet and keep your eyes open.”

They padded silently up the gradual incline of the gallery, passing more of the rusting iron doors, all standing partially ajar. At the top of the slope, the gallery turned back sharply on itself, still angling upward. Some words were crudely lettered on the wall in a script Garion could not recognize. “Grandfather,” he whispered, pointing at the words.

Belgarath glanced at the lettering and grunted. “Ninth level,” he muttered. “We’re still some distance below the city.”

“How far do we go before we start running into Murgos?” Barak rumbled, looking around with his hand on his sword hilt.

Belgarath shrugged slightly. “It’s hard to say. I’d guess that only the top two or three levels are occupied.”

They followed the gallery upward until it turned sharply, and once again there were words written on the wall in the alien script. “Eighth level,” Belgarath translated. “Keep going.”

The smell of the slave pens grew stronger as they progressed upward through the succeeding levels.

“Light ahead,” Durnik warned sharply, just before they turned the corner to enter the fourth level.

“Wait here,” Silk breathed and melted around the corner, his dagger held close against his leg.

The light was dim and seemed to be bobbing slightly, growing gradually brighter as the moments dragged by. “Someone with a torch,” Barak muttered.

The torchlight suddenly flickered, throwing gyrating shadows. Then it grew steady, no longer bobbing. After a few moments, Silk came back, carefully wiping his dagger. “A Murgo,” he told them. “I think he was looking for something. The cells up there are still empty.”

“What did you do with him?” Barak asked.

“I dragged him into one of the cells. They won’t stumble over him unless they’re looking for him.”

Relg was carefully veiling his eyes.

“Even that little bit of light?” Durnik asked him.

“It’s the color of it,” Relg explained.

They rounded the corner into the fourth level and started up again. A hundred yards up the gallery a torch was stuck into a crack in the wall, burning steadily. As they approached it, they could see a long smear of fresh blood on the uneven, littered floor.

Belgarath stopped outside the cell door, scratching at his beard. “What was he wearing?” he asked Silk.

“One of those hooded robes,” Silk replied. “Why?”

“Go get it.”

Silk looked at him briefly, then nodded. He went back into the cell and came out a moment later carrying a black Murgo robe. He handed it to the old man.

Belgarath held up the robe, looking critically at the long cut running up the back. “Try not to put such big holes in the rest of them,” he told the little man.

Silk grinned at him. “Sorry. I guess I got a bit overenthusiastic. I’ll be more careful from now on.” He glanced at Barak. “Care to join me?” he invited.

“Naturally. Coming, Mandorallen?”

The knight nodded gravely, loosening his sword in its sheath. “We’ll wait here, then,” Belgarath told them. “Be careful, but don’t take any longer than you have to.”

The three men moved stealthily on up the gallery toward the third level.

“Can you guess at the time, father?” Aunt Pol asked quietly after they had disappeared.

“Several hours after midnight.”

“Will we have enough time left before dawn?”

“If we hurry.”

“Maybe we should wait out the day here and go up when it gets dark again.”

He frowned. “I don’t think so, Pol. Ctuchik’s up to something. He knows I’m coming—I’ve felt that for the last week—but he hasn’t made a move of his own yet. Let’s not give him any more time than we have to.

“He’s going to fight you, father.”

“It’s long overdue anyway,” he replied. “Ctuchik and I have been stepping around each other for thousands of years because the time was never just exactly right. Now it’s finally come down to this.” He looked off into the darkness, his face bleak. “When it starts, I want you to stay out of it, Pol.”

She looked at the grim-faced old man for a long moment, then nodded. “Whatever you say, father,” she said.

The Murgo robe was made of coarse, black cloth and it had a strange red emblem woven into the fabric just over Garion’s heart. It smelled of smoke and of something else even more unpleasant. There was a small ragged hole in the robe just under the left armpit, and the cloth around the hole was wet and sticky. Garion’s skin cringed away from that wetness.

They were moving rapidly up through the galleries of the last three levels of the slave pens with the deep-cowled hoods of the Murgo robes hiding their faces. Though the galleries were lighted by sooty torches, they encountered no guards, and the slaves locked behind the pitted iron doors made no sound as they passed. Garion could feel the dreadful fear behind those doors.

“How do we get up into the city?” Durnik whispered.

“There’s a stairway at the upper end of the top gallery,” Silk replied softly.

“Is it guarded?”

“Not any more.”

An iron-barred gate, chained and locked, blocked the top of the stairway, but Silk bent and drew a slim metal implement from one boot, probed inside the lock for a few seconds, then grunted with satisfaction as the lock clicked open in his hand. “I’ll have a look,” he whispered and slipped out.

Beyond the gate Garion could see the stars and, outlined against them, the looming buildings of Rak Cthol. A scream, agonized and despairing, echoed through the city, followed after a moment by the hollow sound of some unimaginably huge iron gong. Garion shuddered.

A few moments later, Silk slipped back through the gate. “There doesn’t seem to be anybody about,” he murmured softly. “Which way do we go?”

Belgarath pointed. “That way. We’ll go along the wall to the Temple.”

“The Temple?” Relg asked sharply.

“We have to go through it to get to Ctuchik,” the old man replied. “We’re going to have to hurry. Morning isn’t far off.”

Rak Cthol was not like other cities. The vast buildings had little of that separateness that they had in other places. It was as if the Murgos and Grolims who lived here had no sense of personal possession, so that their structures lacked that insularity of individual property to be found among the houses in the cities of the West. There were no streets in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather interconnecting courtyards and corridors that passed between and quite often through the buildings.

The city seemed deserted as they crept silently through the dark courtyards and shadowy corridors, yet there was a kind of menacing watchfulness about the looming, silent black walls around them. Peculiar-looking turrets jutted from the walls in unexpected places, leaning out over the courtyards, brooding down at them as they passed. Narrow windows stared accusingly at them, and the arched doorways were filled with lurking shadows. An oppressive air of ancient evil lay heavily on Rak Cthol, and the stones themselves seemed almost to gloat as Garion and his friends moved deeper and deeper into the dark maze of the Grolim fortress.